


hold not the wolf by the ears

by anarchetypal



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - GTA, Fake AH Crew, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 11:14:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3608055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchetypal/pseuds/anarchetypal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan’s got his hand on Geoff’s arm, the blank pale of his fingers in stark contrast to the tattoos all along the expanse of Geoff’s skin. He pauses, gaze catching on something and zeroing in.</p>
<p>"You got a new one."</p>
<p>"Yeah. Funny how life goes on even when you aren’t here." It’s the wrong thing to say, Geoff knows, even before it’s completely out of his mouth. The subsequent stretching beats of silence confirm it. He’s great at keeping Ryan’s eyes off his cards, but fuck if he doesn’t show his hand at the worst moment every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold not the wolf by the ears

It’s 3:17 in the morning when someone starts pounding on the door.

Geoff knows the exact time because it’s damn near burned into his retinas from the bedside table alarm clock. The irradiated red numbers flash behind his eyelids through each blink as he rolls out of bed on pure instinct, half conscious and experiencing the level of irritation generally associated with the chronically tired.

He crosses the motel room in a series of stumbling, shuffling strides and hopes to holy hell the heist in San Andreas a few days ago hasn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

It takes a few seconds of staring through the peephole’s fisheye lens to realize who’s in the hallway. “Aw, Christ.” He’s sporting a pair of boxers and a left sock and zero fucking shame, so he opens the door and leans against it, squinting a bit against the light from the hall that spills unrelentingly inside.

Ryan’s body casts a long shadow into the room.

He looks uncomfortable, cagey, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket and not quite shuffling from foot to foot. He’s got a split lip and there’s a smudge of face paint on his jaw. It looks like he tries to offer a smile, but it manifests like a nervous tic of his cheek. He doesn’t say anything, predictably.

So Geoff does. “So where the fuck have you been?” he offers, the question rhetorical, a greeting more than anything else. It’s been about two months since he’s seen Ryan, but he learned years ago not to bother worrying—or looking for him—when he drops off the grid.

He turns, shuffling back into the blessed dark of the room, hears Ryan catch the door before it can swing shut.

"Heard the heist went well," Ryan says, and Geoff’s exhausted, but he smiles, because Ryan can act like he doesn’t give a fuck all he wants, but he’s never been able to not keep tabs on the crew.

"Good take, no injuries." Geoff sits down on the bed and snorts. "Well, Gavin sprained his ankle, but that happened  _after_ we got away.” Which, to be fair, if there were ever a good time to sprain your ankle, Gavin nailed it. “But you know,” he says, gesturing vaguely.

“How it is,” Ryan supplies, expression a little softer now. “I do.”

“Left them downtown while I came out here to wrap up the last of it.”

“Wrap up—”

“Permanently.” Geoff grins a little, does a little finger-across-the-throat motion. “Could’ve used you,” he adds, raising an eyebrow.

“Could’ve brought Jack,” Ryan points out, never to be guilt-tripped—never to be manipulated, and that’s why he’s good at what he does, why Geoff has never been able to take the animal at the center of Ryan, the wild, headstrong thing within him, and grab hold and control it, not for any sweet-talking or bribes or threats in the world.

“Could’ve. Didn’t.”

Ryan’s expression is unequivocally  _then don’t bitch about it_. "Took a while to find you." He gestures to the motel room at large. "This is very…"

"Very," Geoff agrees.

"Different. For you."

"No five star hotel, no penthouse suite, no king-sized bed," Geoff rattles off, swinging his feet up on the bed and leaning back. He’s got the money for extravagance, but sometimes extravagance is exhausting. Sometimes a place off the highway where you have to check the mattress for bed bugs is comforting.

(Sometimes it reminds you of years ago, when you’re fresh-faced, twenty-something and fucking a guy whose Georgia accent hasn’t bled out yet, who hasn’t killed a man but wants to, asks to, needs to.)

Ryan’s standing off to the side in a way that’d be awkward if it’d been anybody else. Geoff beckons with a lazy, expectant gesture. “Move the mountain to Mohammad,” he says, and it coaxes a laugh from Ryan, who toes his shoes off and shrugs out of his jacket and gets into the bed. It’s smaller than they’re used to. Ryan’s body heat radiates out from where he’s propped up against the headboard, left leg pressed up against Geoff’s right one, denim to skin. He smells a little like gasoline, like cigarette smoke, like gun oil.

And he’s stiff, like he tends to be, like he has to take some time to remember how to stop being the person he becomes when he leaves, like he needs to refamiliarize himself to this life, to work past the block in his throat and file down the rough edges of himself to fit back snug in this six-part jigsaw way of existing.

"East coast," he offers finally.

Geoff thinks about that. It’s farther than he thought Ryan had gone. “For?”

"Loose ends. Clear my head."

Meaning Ryan had business to take care of and then took some time to play lone wolf, to take refuge in long days of silence, in single-man jobs, in boxy motel rooms probably not unlike this one. He’s never been gone for two months before, but to be fair, the last time he’d done this was nearly a year ago.

Geoff doesn’t get the appeal of isolation, but he knows Ryan needs it sometimes, like how Ray needs it, like how Gavin can’t stand it. He runs the crew, shepherds them, but can’t cage them. Works out best for everybody involved to let them do whatever the fuck makes them less likely to get stabby towards the wrong people.

It’s quiet for a moment, easy, familiar silence that starts to lull Geoff back to sleep, but Ryan shifts over and leans down and kisses him before he can get there. Geoff relaxes the way he does only at the end of a good heist, when his gaze has skipped over five heads on instinct, everybody present and accounted for.

Last time, it wasn’t like this. Last time, Ryan showed back up and everything was off, tension cranked up and twisted in just the wrong way. Geoff doesn’t remember who threw the first punch, but he remembers the moment of  _shift_ , of something sparking in Ryan’s eyes and Geoff grabbing at his belt and the two of them fucking, rough and no finesse, right there against the wall in his penthouse.

Sometimes that’s what it takes, for things to go back to normal.

Ryan leaves and Ryan returns, and they fuck or fight or both, or go on a drive, or kiss all nice and slow in some shitty motel room on the outskirts of Los Santos.

What they don’t do is talk about it. And that’s good. That’s easy. Uncomplicated. He’d rather sink his teeth into Ryan’s shoulder than take his jumbled mess of thoughts and try to hammer them out into something coherent.

When they break apart, Ryan’s got his hand on Geoff’s arm, the blank pale of his fingers in stark contrast to the tattoos all along the expanse of Geoff’s skin. He pauses, gaze catching on something and zeroing in.

"You got a new one."

"Yeah. Funny how life goes on even when you aren’t here." It’s the wrong thing to say, Geoff knows, even before it’s completely out of his mouth. The subsequent stretching beats of silence confirm it. He’s great at keeping Ryan’s eyes off his cards, but fuck if he doesn’t show his hand at the worst moment every time. Eventually, he looks up.

Ryan’s watching him carefully. “You miss me?” he asks, and it’d be the perfect mix of humor and nonchalance if it weren’t for the caution in his eyes, in the way his fingers trace the sloping lines of Geoff’s new ink molasses-slow.

There’s fuck-all Geoff can say to that question without opening up one can of worms or another, so he just rolls his eyes and props himself up, presses Ryan into the mattress and gets a hand in his jeans.

And soon Ryan’s kissing him again, breath hitching while Geoff jacks him off slow, a steady rise to gasping climax like a reminder— _you’re back, you’re here, you’re mine again, ours again, don’t stray for so long_.

——

It's just past ten in the morning when Geoff stirs, sunlight streaming in through the thin curtains and prodding him slowly into reluctant consciousness. The weight dipping the mattress beside him is an anchor, is a reason to sit up and press the heels of his hands against his eyes.

Ryan's stripped down to his boxers, awake, the trashy paperback crime thriller Geoff picked up a couple days ago open in his lap. He hasn't slept—Geoff would bet anything on that—and won't, probably, until they're back at Geoff's place that night, the familiar chaos of a six-person syndicate giving him enough security to keep his eyes shut.

(Geoff was able to admit a long time ago that nothing feels like home quite like any place where all six of them are together. It's going to take Ryan a while to get to that point, he thinks, even if Ryan keeps tabs on them when he's three thousand miles away.)

Geoff leans against him, yawning. "Wanna get breakfast?"

"Wanna shower?" Ryan prompts, closing the book and raising an eyebrow at him.

"—he says, unaware that he's a hypocrite who smells like the inside of a gas tank."

Ryan smacks him with the book, but he's smiling. "Get the water started."

"And?"

"And I'll join you."

"You have a lot of faith in my ability not to slip and end up with my knee making friends with your dick," Geoff says, climbing out of bed and stretching as he walks to the bathroom. He's not even sure there's enough room in the shower for them both, but he can't really find it in him to care.

"No," says Ryan, "I have a lot of faith in  _my_ ability to catch you when you inevitably fall," and then he laughs, ducking, when Geoff sends one of the tiny motel shampoo bottles hurtling towards his head.

Geoff lets the sound of the water devolve into white noise, stripping out of the few remaining articles of clothing he's got on as the mirror steams up.

"We could skip breakfast," comes Ryan's voice, a little muted through the wall and the sound of the shower, but Geoff can hear the cautious exhaustion in his voice. "Could just go straight home."

And Geoff steps into the shower, water matting his hair down flat to his head and drilling a staccato massage into his shoulders. He thinks about Los Santos, about downtown, about the penthouse and the four people waiting for them to walk through the front door.

"Yeah," he says, smiling when Ryan pushes the shower curtain aside and steps in with him, their bodies nearly flush together in the tiny space, and Ryan’s not stiff at all now, the set of his shoulders relaxed and comfortable and trusting. "Let's go home."

**Author's Note:**

> hey, guys, doing some cross-posting from my writing/inspiration blog here: http://anarchetypal.tumblr.com/


End file.
